Action Research Paper

Implementing Written Assessments in

Physical Education

Brittany Jawor
March 24th, 2017
Introduction & Purpose
Physical Education is in the midst of revolutionizing curriculum to fulfill
new national and state standards. The history of physical education has always
focused on combining fitness and sport education. This historic curriculum
concentrated on testing students through physical assessments. Physical
education was graded on participation, effort, and physical ability. This type of
assessment has proven to be subjective as well as derogatory the students
who may struggle athletically.
The segregation between students who excel athletically and those who
excel academically have caused many issues within physical education. For
example, students who struggle in athletics were given fewer opportunities to
correct and gain new skills in both sports and other physical activities.
Therefore, these students start a rapid decline of enthusiasm for physical
education. If a student feels like he or she is not good at something, he or she
will grow to not like that activity and consequently, they never practice or work
to improve this skill. This behavior perpetuates a never-ending cycle that
doesnt allow the student to excel. Society is starting to see a rise in obesity, a
decrease in the amount of student athletes, and an early onset of health issues
related to a lack of physical activity.
Today, physical education is making changes to the curriculum by
assessing students in three domains: psychomotor, cognitive, and affective.
This change has taken longer to implement in current physical education
settings because current teachers are unaware of the new standards, have a
lack of adequate training for implementing changes, or show little desire to
make changes to their current routine. Students and society have a concrete
image of physical education being structured as game play, movement
exploration, and 60 minutes of basic movement.
The action research serves a purpose of testing effects as well as student
disposition to implementing cognitive assessments in physical education.
Cognitive assessments are unfamiliar routines for this physical education class,
which means this action research is authentic, participating students are
novices, and all testing material will be original.

Professional Research
Education World Journal released an article talking about the increase of
written assignments in all content area, including physical education. Physical
education classes are using journals, blogs, letters, written sequences, and
additional written assignments to enhance student learning for fitness and
body awareness (Kohl, H. W., & I., 2013). These types of assessments have
demonstrated the ability to get students to think critically about their fitness
and design plans to help reach goals and provide opportunities to express their
creativity through writing. Written assessments provide opportunities for
students to explore, plan, and create essential components of fitness that
physical activity in a class setting may hinder.
Educating the Student Body studied the purpose of physical education
and found five approaches use physical education as an resource for struggling
content areas. Their research found that school districts are experiencing a
great deal of pressure to increase math, reading, and language arts testing
scores. In hopes of making improvments in these areas, 62 percent of
elementary schools and 20 percent of middle schools have increased
instructional time in reading/language arts and mathematics (Center on
Education Policy, 2008). This increase in instructional time came at the
expense of music, art, and physical education. This strategy may be
counterproductive according to a plethora of research studies that
demonstrates physical activity can increase a students ability to learn and
retain information. Physical education leads to an improvement in grades,
standardized test scores, and overall success in academics. In fact, evidence
links higher levels of physical fitness with better school attendance and less
disciplinary issues.
The Center for Disease Control conducted a study that found the positive
effects of physical activity on the brain. Research has shown that physical
movement can affect the brains physiology by increasing cerebral capillary
growth, growth of nerve cells in the center of the brain for learning and
memory, development of nerve connections, and density of neural network
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010 ). The CDC reported that
over 50 percent of the data collected demonstrated a direct connection
between physical education classes and extracurricular physical activity with
increase in academic achievement, better behavior in a classroom setting, and
an increase in cognitive skills and attitudes. The CDCs study found that
increased time in physical education appears to have a positive relationship
with academic achievement (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
2010).
All of these studies are connected by one common denominator; physical
activity increases students cognitive performance and increases academic
success. In addition, students who participate in extracurricular physical
activities are more likely to have a higher GPA and have high standardized
testing scores. Looking at the evidence, it is clear that a physical education
class is a great complementary piece to all other content areas in a schools
curriculum. Finding ways to incorporate content being learned in other subjects
into a more active environment appears to be a strategy that can be used to
help with the problem of low literacy rates and low math scores. This
connection is the foundation behind the purpose of this action research. The
goal of this research is to test strategies of implementing reading, writing, and
math into a physical education setting. Linking these subject areas to physical
education may help struggling students link classroom content to the real-word
and make meaningful connections to activities they enjoy.
Before designing the written assessments for seventh grade, I looked to
New Hampshires Physical Education K-12 Assessment Document. This resource
provided support for a wide variety of assessments and provided strategies for
adapting each assessment for diverse learners. This is where I found many of
my assessment strategies and adapted these methods to my units being
studied.
Setting
The action research took place at Ravenna Middle School during seventh
grade physical education. The experiment took place from February 6th, 2017
until February 17th, 2017. The research took place during the Lacrosse unit for
both seventh and eight grade students. Eight grade students attended physical
education during first hour and consisted of twenty-five participants. Seventh
grade class attended physical education in the morning during second hour
and consisted of twenty-seven participants. Both physical education classes
had a wide range of diverse genders, ethnicities, and culture.
Currently, the students in the tested physical education class have only
endured the following assessments: observation and a unit quiz. The quizzes
are ten multiple-choice questions and only test students knowledge of game
rules. The objective of this action research is to implement formative and
written assessments throughout the unit in order to increase student learning
and increase end of the unit testing scores.
This action research introduces written formative assessments and
performance based assessments for seventh grade participants. The eight
grade participants will receive only skill based assessments and observation by
the instructor during the lacrosse unit. Both subjects will take the summative
assessment at the end of the unit.

Data Collection
The data for this action research was collected through a variety of
methods. These methods include formative written assessments, performance
based assessments, summative assessments, and student surveys. The
purposes of the chosen methods are to find the effectiveness of written
formative assessments and to understand how the students felt about the
given assessments.
The formative assessments that were given included exit slips, skills
checklist, concept maps, and worksheets. All assessments were given to the
instructor for grading. The instructor graded the assessment on a three-point
scale: on target, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory. On target represented
students willingness to complete the entire assessment with an 85% or greater
success rate. Satisfactory represented students willingness to complete most
of the assessment with at least a 60% success rate. Lastly, unsatisfactory
represents students with less than 60% success rate or their unwillingness
attempt the given assessment.
Performance or skill-based assessments were recorded through instructor
observation and the use of a skills checklist. The instructor prompted students
to perform a given skill and recorded the outcome on a three-point scale: on
target, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory. The data collected was then graphed
using Google spreadsheets and compared to the results of written
assessments.
 The summative assessment was a unit quiz given on the last day of the
lacrosse unit. This assessment was graded on a standard percent grading
scale. Data collected was recorded and graphed using Google spread sheets.
The student survey was also given at the end of the action research
study to assess how students felt about written assessments in physical
education compared to performance based assessments. This data was
recorded on Google spread sheets by graphing the response to each question.

Results

Formative

assessments data collected found that of twenty-seven participants, 78% of

students completed all formative assessment on target, 15% were satisfactory,
and 7% were unsatisfactory.
 Performance based assessment data collection for eight graders showed
that 18 of the participants were on target, 4 were satisfactory, and 3 were
unsatisfactory. This data was comparable to the data collection from seventh
grade participants which showed that 20 were on target, 5 were satisfactory,

Summative Assessment- 8th Grade Summative Assessment- 7th Grade

and 2 were unsatisfactory.

Data collected from eight grade summative collected revealed that 60%
of the participants scored 85% or higher, 28% scored above a 65%, and 12%
scored less than 65%. Data collected from seventh grade summative collected
revealed that 74% of the participants scored 85% or higher, 12% scored above
a 65%, and 4% scored less that 65%.

Data collected from the survey is demonstrated in the graph above. This
collection of data shows that seventh grade students felt the written
assessments took away from activity time and were not enjoyable. Eight grade
students expressed skill performance assessments were a better option than
written assessments.

Summary of Results
Based off the results from the study, written formative assessments
demonstrated an improvement in student cognitive learning of Lacrosse
concepts and assisted with development of manipulative skills. On average,
seventh grade participants earned a better grade on the unit quiz. In addition,
the seventh grade participants has fewer students score lower than 65%,
indicating that students either learned the content at a more successful rate or
were more willing to participate in the assessment.
Reviewing the results from the performance based assessments showed
participants from eighth grade did not demonstrate signs of greater
performance success. Eighth grade students did not partake in written
assessments, which meant they were given extra time to work on performance
skills for Lacrosse. This added time did not generate results that indicated their
mastery of the skill was any greater than the seventh grade participants who
experienced time away from physical practice to engage in cognitive learning.
The results from the survey indicated that the majority of participants did
not like the added written assessments. Seventh grade participants found the
assessments to be helpful when preparing for the unit quiz and many found the
assessments to be helpful for learning the correct form for given skills.
Although students found the assessments to be useful, they did not like the
time it took away from physical practice. The survey also revealed that eight
grade students felt there was a lack of opportunities to prepare for the end of
the unit quiz.
These results leads to the assumption that students may not like taking
time out of physical education to participate in written formative assessments,
however, these assessments prove to be beneficial for learning all aspects of a
unit as well as skill performance. The formative assessments provided students
with checkpoints throughout the unit and allowed both students and instructor
to find areas that needed improvement.
This action research demonstrates that physical education doesnt
always have to be assessed by physical movements. In fact, physical education
can benefit from incorporating a wide variety of assessment methods that will
reach a wide range of diverse learners.

Improvements for Future Research

In the future, using the same grade level could increase the accuracy of
this study. The study needed to be conducted using two different grade levels
because there is only one class per grade level each trimester. The different
grade levels make it hard to have a clear distinction of the results being
produced.
Another option that could be considered for future use is using one class
and dividing the students evenly between students receives written
assessments and students receiving only performance assessments. This would
help to eliminate many uncontrollable variables such as the diversity of
students from class to class, changing instructional methods from class to
class, and the diverse class times.
Additional changes that would be made to this action research are
changing some of the written assessments. A few of the assessments took
longer than expected. These assessments can be shortened or changed so
they take less time but still achieve the same objective.

Resources Page
Fernandez-Balboa, J. (1992, November 30). Sociocultural Characteristics of the
Hidden Curriculum in Physical Education. Retrieved March 23, 2017, from
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ469791

Kickball, Calisthenics And Composition. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2017, from
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev/profdev118.shtml

Kohl, H. W., & I. (2013, October 30). Approaches to Physical Education in

Schools. Retrieved March 23, 2017, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201493/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The association between school-
based physical activity, including physical education, and academic
performance. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services;
2010. https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/health_and_academics/pdf/pa-
pe_paper.pdf

New Hampshire State Department of Education. (2007). New Hampshire

Physical Education K-12 Assessment Document (New Hampshire Association for
Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, Ed.). Retrieved March, 2017, from
https://www.education.nh.gov/instruction/curriculum/phys_ed/documents/asses
sment.pdf

Lund, J. L., & Kirk, M. F. (2010). Performance-based assessment for middle and
high school physical education. Leeds: Human Kinetics.